: Given that the OP was hardly controversial, in no way rude or offensive, and phrased as a very open question,

I agree with this. But not the rest of the line. When I read the original post, I read it as "I'm worried I'm getting more downvotes, and want to know if this is true, without getting more downvotes." In short, I see it as a request for information. But clearly, there are two ways of reading it.

Therefore possible solutions would be: 1) just give everyone more detailed information (possibly in such a way that you wouldn't have to see it if you didn't want to) such as "You have gained 2 experience points. You have 200000000 points to go to reach level vroom. (+3,-1)" or having nodes show the + and - votes as well as the total. The arguments against this have generally been that this information will cause obsession about points, but tye's willingness to answer the question suggests that perhaps the attitude has changed.

2) /msg gods Could you please tell me if I've been losing more xp lately?

With either of these solutions, the original poster gets what she or he wants (an answer without exposing her/himself to the world at large), and tye isn't guessing about whether it was an answer or a conversation that the person wanted, so everyone else is happy too.

Update Summary of my post could be that I agree with point 1 below and am not at all concerned about point 3.

The first part of the sentence was simply meant indicate that there was nothing in the OP that required even editor-action, never mind God-action. That's all. I specifically made no mention nor inference about the content of the post.

The second part of the sentence was intended to indicate that tye had taken an

Unusual step -- I've never seen a post that was effectively complaining about XP, responded to with specific information by a God.

They are generally ignored, or the community responds with the "XP + $2.00 buys you a burger" etc.

A capricious step -- there was no sign of any consultation; change in the guidelines; or a generally available service.

Every indication was that tye chose to find out the facts and deliver them as a way of supppressing any further speculation.

Of itself this is a perfectly laudable aim, but...

A "questionable" step -- That there are, and have to be, people who have the access to perform the kind of analysis required to discover the OP's monk-id, is obvious and unconcealed, if not widely discussed.

But previous discussions and implications of the possibility have (to my knowledge) always been confined to the realms of XP cheat detection. Ie. Are there any monks that have created 2 or more monk-ids for the purpose of using the secondary accounts to upvote their own nodes on their primary account. As such, the wielding of the power has been (in my interpretation) a necessary evil required to mantain the status quo.

In this case, there was no such reason for the power to be weilded.

In my view, tye's action was a perfectly reasonable response to the OP, and I didn't respond to his post on that basis. However, the question arose (by an Anonymous Monk though we later learn, not the original one), as to whether his action was a) justified in the circumstance. b) was an abuse of his power given the lack of any trollish behaviour to so justify it.

but tye's willingness to answer the question suggests that perhaps the attitude has changed.

The post to which I responded was generally dismissive of this second Anonymous Monk's concerns that this was a step beyond the previously accepted bounds of the use of the power.

It was in response to this indifference to the apparent change in policy that I posted. I felt any such change in attitude or policy should be, if not a community decision, then at least an announced policy with the boundaries clearly stated. Rather than capricious, as it appeared to be, despite that it was apparent that "no harm was done" and "good intentions" were inferable.

I realise now that my wording plus perhaps a little history, made it look like a personal attack on tye, that wasn't my intent. Nor was I suggesting any changes to the XP system--though my long standing, personal preference would be for (nn++/mm--) both on individual posts and totals.

It was made in defense of the concern that an unannounce change of policy regarding anonymity was now in force.

When putting a smiley right before a closing parenthesis, do you:

Use two parentheses: (Like this: :) )
Use one parenthesis: (Like this: :)
Reverse direction of the smiley: (Like this: (: )
Use angle/square brackets instead of parentheses
Use C-style commenting to set the smiley off from the closing parenthesis
Make the smiley a dunce: (:>
I disapprove of emoticons
Other